An article yesterday in MarketingVOX reported that comScore is adding a new metric to track user engagement. Actually it appears that this metric has existed for quite some time but has only now just emerged to a place of prominence. What is this latest crazy in the web metric world? comScore is using “visits” – the number of distinct times people visit a site per day, with at least 30 minutes between each visit.
Why the difference? According to the article, reported by ClickZ.com, but posted by MarketingVOX, “whereas pageviews generate a raw number of how many pages on the site were hit in a given period, visits point to a user’s engagement with the site. “
But, as is common these days, the concept of moving to “visits” to track isn’t compatible with everyone. The main problem is that visits will not correspond to page impressions and that is a big factor in online advertising models. However, Yahoo Chief of Insights Peter Daboll is quoted as saying “coupling visits with a site’s reach and the length of each stay offers a fuller picture of the site’s audience.“
Not a done deal and everyone has their own method to their madness, so right now we don’t have a standard for tracking.
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One problem for advertisers is that visits, unlike pageviews, don’t correspond to ad impressions. But coupling visits with a site’s reach and the length of each stay offers a fuller picture of the site’s audience.
Is there a way to relate them back from an impression served?
If you’re going to track ad impressions, I would try and use some tracking tags attached to each ad that will be served on behalf of your company. Aft the end of the campaign, you can try to reconcile the number of visits with the records that you received through your tracking tags.